ZeeHero wrote:
Shrug. All I can say is I disagree that movement is not the answer to exciting combat and it is not my "problem" if I didn't enjoy FFXIV correctly. I tried to get into it but just didn't find it exciting. You are welcome to your opinion but it is probably best I not respond anymore. I hope the devs can find a compromise that lets you enjoy the game. Good day.

SavageFist wrote:
I hope so too, I think a good compromise would be to only have the attacks which require rooting for the animation root you. Champions Online did that for some attacks, but most attacks still allowed you to move. that way some attacks would root, some would not. I don't see any other way to compromise on rooting for attacks if actual compromise is to happen.

Being able to move and attack at the same time is nice. But it's also a design decision. If you choose not to go that route, that's understandable.

That said - players should have a way of 'breaking out' of their own attack. A way for them to cancel their attack and move out of the way of an AoE that's clearly coming now. A smart hero doesn't just stand there while a meteor is forming over their head and is about to drop on them - just for the sake of finishing their awesome looking power blast.

Being completely unable to cancel your attack and move out of attack areas would lead to a massive number of unnecessary and irritating deaths for the average player. Most people are not going to be cautious or hardcore enough to dedicate themselves to min/maxing their counting skills to know precisely when the boss is going to do their mega-death AoE again. If they can't move, more players than not are going to get hit. And they will die, and the group will wipe and everyone will be annoyed.

We see the solution for this in nearly every MMO out there. Movement cancels your cast. Melee is a different beast, and often has a little more leeway because of two things.

• Its range is non-existent
• It requires more time to escape AoEs because of this

Edit: I agree that the idea of mixing some roots into a set would be a reasonable compromise.

Firstly, i'll get some points i had about both CO and CoX combat out of the way. I didn't favor one over the other, i did like pushing more then 1 button that CoX favored(you know, attack chaining), I also enjoyed moving in CO while shooting. Now with that small bit out of the way....

...i never stood still even while attacking in CoH later on. How did I do that? I'd jump just as I launched an attack, so momentum would carry me during the animation. Except when I was meleeing on a scrapper or brute, I generally kept mobile. I'd even jump while firing off a blaze to close distance with a mob to chargeed-punch them on my blaster, or any other devastating melee attack. It was more fluid when I could do that, and rooting was bypassed effectively. The devs of CoH were even aware of those tactics as pvpers LOVED doing that, as did experienced veterans. They even wanted to add moving while fighting, but the engine limitations got in the way.

So with that out of the way to, I'm actually in favor of there being attacks both melee and range which you can move while using, and others that favor standing still. But notice I said 'favor standing still', doesn't necessarily mean a root, though some attacks I say should. I remember playing deus ex 1 and how accuracy would drop sharply when you moved. Vampire: Bloodlines also did that. Both were rpg's with shooter elements, but your ability to HIT the badguys wasn't necessarily your skill at shooters but how skilled JC Denton/the fledgling were at firing guns.

Melee likewise, realistically you don't get to run and swing at the same time to get good draws on a cut or a swing necessarily, footwork matters tremendously for parrying blades/hammers/axes to. It really, really depends on the weapon. Swords are probably the WORST for moving and swinging, because it's not the swing but the DRAW that cuts, how the blade runs along flesh rather than simply hitting the flesh. Sure, you could try impaling someone while running with a sword, even half swording I suppose(i'm not an expert of melee fighting, all I got are videos from actual enthusiasts), but cutting is not the same as piercing someone. An axe or mace(any heavy piece melee weapon) could do serious damage while running, but not blades depending on a draw. If a sword was handled while running you'd be better trying to bash them with the pommel through half swording in reverse and using it as a make-shift mace and even then an actual mace or axe would do better.

Kicks and punches are another matter entirely.

So I thought of this:

Some attacks can be used while moving, melee or range, with no penalty. These are light attacks.
Some attacks have a sharp drop in accuracy while moving(and even slow the player some while they are in use), these are the medium hitters. Some AoE's in ranged(but not melee) can do this to.
The hardest hitters immob the player character while in use melee or range.

Immobs, in order to not just make a player use heavy hitters, could give a massive accuracy drop for any attacks that are medium/heavy hitters as to assure immobs could still be useful.

Not all sets have to have the same mobility rules, some could be more mobile others could be less. Like swords could be the least mobile but have excellent melee-defenses(swords are pretty versatile after all and excel at parrying weapons away). Axes and blunt hammers/maces could be more mobile and harder hitting at the same time but suffer some on like, general swinging speed(not to much though, if you wanted to be realistic even heavier maces were quick).

Guns course, sacrifice accuracy to move significantly, some general ranged powers could be less or more penalized as they move in exchange for things like better accuracy or better damage or overall attack speeds(besides the usual debuff effects which could even be implemented to increase movement penalties for even more variety,ooooh).

Just a thorough thought on it. Again Im not favoring one or the other. I'd rather it depended on the powerset for varieties sake, and if it did think about this: It'd give way more opportunities down the line to have even more balanced sets.

LaughingAlex, do you remember the total disdain for the accuracy debuff CoH players had when using an attack with Flight on? It made sense to me but at the time the playerbase absolutely hated it and we ended up with travel suppression. Just wanted to throw that out there where things may make sense to you or me but the majority of players will vote it out of existence. Whether this adds anything to the discussion, I don't know but part of your comment just reminded me when devs tried to balance using powers with movement and the unexpected backlash from the playerbase.

Maybe we need to be honest about any action games and ask whether they have as many powersets or as large a hotbar as this genre and if they do, is that the norm or an outlier? At least to me there is a reason action games have 8 or less available powers at one time(yes, you can swap powers but at that point you are out of combat) because it probably becomes exponentially more difficult to balance the more powers you have available. This is where it would be nice if the VO devs would step in and explain where the breaking point exists with non-rooting powers.

Regardless, we have no idea how combat will feel at this time and the devs did partially address the issue saying they will go over the animations to try and minimize them so combat at least appears to flow better.

You don't need to have a small hotbar to have a actiony feel to a game. you just need to not restrict movement too much. Less ability bloat helps of course, but is not absolutely required.

Travel power removal is ok if its an ability an enemy or a player has which turns off travels for a short time, followed by a period of immunity to travel disables. this is how Champions Online balances it and it works very well, what ruins CO's gameplay is poor enemy design and neglect, not movement.

When is travel power removal NOT ok? when it's disabled for an entire fight, like CO's Warlord or Cybermind.

I will reiterate that they are trying to make a SUPER HERO GAME. capturing the feel of super hero combat should be a top priority, and that requires they allow plenty of movement while fighting.

So I went and watched a few videos on CO combat to try to get a better idea of the desired gameplay. Having not played CO myself, and just based on appearances, I have to agree with what someone else [Laughing Alex] said about effectively eliminating rooting in CoX by popping attacks mid-motion. The videos I just watched looked really similar to what it used to look like playing my katana/SR or claws/regen. Definitely different story for ranged combat in CoX.

I just don't know technically how you would achieve a realistic animation. Since there are clearly two camps on this, my reference point is reality. In the real world, you can't kick someone and move at the same time without things getting super awkward.

I think it would be perfectly reasonable to have animations that root--because they have to, or else look like everyone's wearing slick shoes, or connecting with targets when their fists are pointing at air--but then to also allow motion to break the animation *and* the attack. At the expense of resource, cooldown, or both. Maybe there's a special key for moving out of an attack animation, like a shift+move. That way you wouldn't trigger the penalty inadvertently.

Just like in baseball. You can try to check your swing, but sometimes it still counts as a strike.

It seems fairly complex, though. Someone else [Itlandm] commented about the negative impact that would have on a community-oriented player base. That shouldn't be trivialized; one of the biggest improving the experience threads is exactly about how CoX was successful because of its approachable community atmosphere.

It depends on what the game is trying to be. I also never had a problem feeling like a superhero in CoX. The depth of power sets, along with the richness and scale of the world, were enough to do the trick.

Maybe I could have felt like a more super hero if I wasn't rooted as much? But at the point where we're pondering superlatives, hasn't the basic goal been met?

Not trying to dismiss Zee's request. It does sound like a fun play style.

cristobal03 wrote:
Well if they can meet us halfway and make it like CO where only SOME attacks root, and those attacks can be cancelled early I will be happy. it need not be as completely actiony as DCUO. But locking people into animations and in place during EVERY attack, ESPECIALLY melee attacks (look at other games, they almost never root melee) would be completely unnacceptable.

Yeah, base attacks, for example, shouldn't root at all. Only charge attacks and some channels should, for a viable combat system.

As for the kicks part, yeah, I can see where you're coming from, but every system has its flaws and not even WoW roots people for kicking things. I know. I played a monk. And a rogue. And a--you know what, I'm getting off track here, but I think you get my point. It's not like we're saying, "Make this an ARPG!" Merely we're saying "Don't make us sit pretty while using our base attacks."


Again; roots have their place whilst casting. Just that place isn't instant cast attacks. Yeah, you'd need to be rooted to uproot that bit of pavement. Yeah, you'd need to be rooted to charge your Kamehameha. No, you'd not need to be rooted to perform a fencer's dance or a bullet ballet (MAYBE for Gun Kata, as that inherently requires the use of stances and minimizing body area).

SavageFist wrote:
Firstly I'll clarify, I stated if you were "MOVING", as in actually mobile, not standing, or hovering, or clinging still. If you weren't actually moving at all you wouldn't be penalized as you were being still. So a flier would still be able to shoot accurately or use heavy powers. Even with a travel power active as long as you were staying still.

I personally didn't play CoH in the earlier days when they tried doing that. I do recall they added a movement debuff to stop kiting since they at that time(remember we are looking at the jack emmerit era if we are looking at farther back then when I started, which is the positron era) very against any smart play. I mean some players are likewise "All or nothing!" very hard, so even my idea would be against both sides in that sense, but I also bring up sets favoring standing still or moving more could be made.

As for power swapping, without getting to off topic, I'm actually against games where I only have 8 powers at a time I always feel pidgin holed into only one role or another that way. Even DCUO has that problem, your either pure cc/battery/damage on a control character(often battery cause people refuse to recognize crowd control exists in that game), or pure tank or pure healer purely cause of only 8 skills. Guild wars 1 also had that problem, :/. I like being more super hero feeling and versatile without being a complete cog in a machine. But thats another topic I think. I will say though, I hated CO's pure freeform over time as I felt it was fundamentally imbalanced, broken, and actually limited options far more in terms of how powerful a theme could be, forcing people into either very specific themes to be a powerful character or just not using any theme at all and making a mary sue/marty stu.

As I said I'm not in favor of one or the other specifically in this case, it was an idea, so long as people aren't going to turn fundamentalist about how to play It'd be an idea which works I feel. Or something where there is beneficial to either form of play and allowing more sets.

I've been reading this argument and have been trying to stay quiet because I wanted to see how this 'everything roots' thing worked in practice but there's been a lot of goofy comments that unawarely defeat their own arguments. So a couple of logical points that no one has really brought up, or at least hammered home enough to really stand out.

1: It doesn't matter how you feel about CoH's mechanics. I, personally, hated CoH's mechanics so much I failed to complete the tutorial four times. By comparison I rage quit DCUO's tutorial twice so, in that respect CoH was twice as interesting to me. The point is that discussing whether something worked in CoH or not is pointless because that was then, this is now and things change. Games have changed. What is popular isn't popular because people feel an emotional attachment to it, it's because it's fun enough to create that emotional attachment. Trying to recreate CoH as a viable game and business model is financial suicide because games have moved on and changed. It's like squares and rectangles. All CoH fans are interested in superhero games but not all superhero fans are interested in games that have CoH mechanics. Saying that something 'worked in CoH so it'll work now' isn't true because CoH went under. That's the bottom line. Everything needs to be re-examined and compared against its contemporaries.

2: Saying that later games were able to learn from CoH's mistakes and that's why CoH went under has been used as argument for dismissing treating 'rooting everything' as a problem. None of the three current superhero mmo games that exist root everything. None of them. Not DC's, not Marvel's and not CO which was made by some of the same development team as CoH. Apparently that same team felt that rooting everything was a mistake and apparently the gaming audience agreed since CO is still running and CoH is not. It's true that you can't point to one, single issue as the thing that kills a game. But why give yourself extra issues to worry about? Why would you intentionally let there be a issue that a majority of your playerbase (people who have never played CoH) are going to -possibly- find obnoxious. CO players are going to be mostly critical of power selection and costume creation functions, DCUO players are going to be mostly critical of the game's speed and freedom of motion, Marvel players are going to be mostly critical of how smooth a experience combat is and, like it or not these player bases dwarf CoH's and these are the players you want to poach.
Ergo: don't let something exist because it's easier to balance because balance on its own is not fun. Balance is balance and is needed for fairness. Fairness is -part- of fun in a game, but it's not the entirety of it. Balance on its own has less to do with fun than making sure something is engaging and exciting. You need balance but 'rooting everything' sounds like it's going to make everything slow and plodding even compared to CO which does root some things and it sounds -painfully- glacial compared to Marvel and DCUO's nauseatingly (in my opinion) fast gameplay. But, y'know what? That's your playerbase.

3: And this goes for everyone: STOP CRAPPING ON PEOPLE FOR TRYING TO OFFER CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. You like rooting? No one cares. You don't like rooting? No one cares. What everyone cares about is making the game better. So unless you're from the future and have seen that VO single handidly puts CO, DCUO and Marvel into the grave then all of our opinions are equal. If someone says 'but rooting worked in CoH' the appropriate response is 'that's nice, but here's how things are now and they should be examined' (which I saw -some- of earlier on). If someone says 'but rooting doesn't work' the appropriate response is 'hm, that's an interesting point, let's try the rooting out and then see what works from it and throw away the rest'. Or at least some other variable of the two that offer an acknowledgement of the other person as being on the same side as you (wanting VO to succeed) before you launch into wordmurder.
In conclusion this is what VO has to do to survive, in order of importance: 1) Be fun. 2) Poach players from competitors. 3) Offer a experience that keeps as many players as possible. 4) Be balanced. Players will forgive a experience that isn't balanced as long as the devs try to work on it and the base gameplay is fun. Now, I plan on waiting until I play to give a actual critique of the game, but the fact the no other superhero MMO uses roots as a core and consistent mechanic is something to be aware of and to keep in mind.

PS: I'm being harsh and rude because I have no compassion for anyone or anything and I operate in a state of cold, painful logic that comes from a dark, dark place. Meaning that I won't be responding to any responses about my post because I don't feel there's a point to that and I shun human interaction on any level. Have a nice day.

Read the interview at provengamer and come back with some better reasoning. It's simple. They tried and it didn't work but it was not a decision that made at the drop of a hat. They tried for years to see if they could balance the system, make it fun and not make it look silly(non-heroic). They had to compromise but don't want people to just look elsewhere as soon as they see the word 'rooted combat' and rather people give it a chance first because any explanation here will not do the final product justice. You can find out even more about their thinking in the most recent livestream starting at 1:23:35

SavageFist wrote: not to disparage the amazing work of the dev team, but if they couldn't make it work, they were not trying the right things. If this game is to succeed they will need to try until it works. Their competition has already made it work.

There are two points that I wanna bring up that I think both the devs and we as players need to be aware of and consider carefully:

First off, DCUO DOES in fact root you during attack animations. Yes, I know you don't believe me, but let me explain And if you want to see for yourself, you can always download the game for free.

Let me explain how it works in DCUO as best as I can. As most should be aware, there are two methods in which players can attack in DCUO; weapons and powers. In regards to weapons, I would say 99% of all weapon actions will disable WASD control until your character completes their animation. The only two exceptions I can think of are tap right clicks and the spinny AOE attack of the Two Handed weapon tree. There may be a few more exceptions I don't know about, but I doubt they're in any significant number. For the vast majority of weapon actions, it behaves like this: tap left clicks are light melee attacks that move your character forward one step towards your target unless you're colliding with another hitbox; hold left clicks are gap closers that will lunge you forward and put you as close to your target's hitbox as it can; hold right clicks are heavy ranged attacks that root you in place completely. In all cases, WASD is disabled and the player is locked into the animation until it completes.

In regards to powers, I would say that it is at least a 60-40 split in favor of rooting. Most power abilities will root you completely; some are gap closers/extenders that will disable WASD control but move you backwards or forwards automatically; some allow you WASD control at a walking pace during the animation; very few allow you WASD control at a jogging pace during the animation. That fact that "animation clipping" exists in DCUO is proof of this, as it is a technique (or controversially, an exploit), that allows players to circumvent the animation lock of certain powers, so they can either continue attacking earlier for more DPS, or move away if they're about to get squished by a boss.

I feel like this is important for people to understand because there is obvious irony in that DCUO has been practically universally regarded as "more actiony" than CO in terms of combat, when in fact it restricts movement much more. As far as I remember, the only time WASD is disabled in CO is during gap closers/extenders. Every Maintain or Charge can be finished early at the discretion of the player. I know that at least some Charges (Haymaker) allow you to cast while moving around, and yes you can in fact deliver a rapid flurry of kicks to your target while sliding around on one foot (Thundering Kicks). It's arguable that CO allows the player much more use and speed out of their travel power during combat as well.

The conclusion I draw, and that I think everyone should consider, is that movement is not all that important in regards to the "action" of the game, rather that PACING and ANIMATIONS are the things that are most influential in making people go "ooh" and "ahh". CoX animations took too long and looked too bland, that's why some people found it boring. DCUO animations rarely last longer than 1 second, and have your character spinning around and doing somersaults. They both root you in place, however DCUO succeeds because it has better animations and faster pacing so you largely don't even notice that you've been locked in place. CO's pacing consists of charging haymaker or maintaining two gun mojo over and over and over again until the boss dies, that's why some people find it boring. DCUO is often more akin to a traditional MMO that features DPS rotations and buff management and that keeps players engaged. The fact that CO allows players more freedom to move around is meaningless since its pacing is too monotonous.

Now, my second point is shorter and more aimed towards the developers' considerations. I know that most of my first point looks like an endorsement of rooting and animation locks, but I assure you it's not the case. I only made that point as food for thought, since combat and fun ARE complex issues. However, personally, I am still concerned when I hear about a combat system that will feature rooting.

The reason I'm concerned is that the vast majority of MMOs out there do not restrict movement in any real way. Notice how in WoW, or SWTOR, or in most any MMO that would come to mind, you see players freely circle-strafing around each other in PVP while they're attacking, and there is no detriment to the game's balance there - in fact it can be a benefit. Some of my fondest experiences in SWTOR were force-pushing people off cliffs or dodge-rolling through a fire trap right before it activates and leaving my pursuers stuck on the other side.

It seems like successful MMO combat that feature animation rooting are very much the exceptions. I can only mention DCUO as one, and I THINK Tera is another (just based off of gameplay vids). Statistically, the odds are against animation rooting, so I hope the devs are very careful and deliberate if they want to go down this route. I don't think it's impossible for combat to be fun without free movement - as I said, I think that movement is secondary compared to pacing and animations - but I just want to urge the devs to consider and learn from both the successes and failures of the MMOs that have come before them.

Crisscross makes a lot of good points. It's not IMPOSSIBLE to succeed with attack rooting, but it is something to be CAREFULLY considered and designed with the action and flow of combat in mind.

If a power has a long animation, such as a continuous beam attack, it should either NOT root, or it should be able to be cancelled by releasing the button.

Anyone who's seen how Champions Online's Maintain attacks work will know what I mean, maintains are powers which keep going for up to a certain maximum time as long as the player holds down the button, but STOP as soon as the button is released.

Even then, some maintains actually allowed movement while maintaining.

darianlancaster wrote:
The problem with this reasoning, and all that follows from it, is that CoH went under not because it was less popular than the other superhero games, but because of internal office politics in their Korean owner, which decided to refocus on their core market. CoH had fended off the competition and was still popular and growing when NCSoft suddenly shut it down. So yeah, you could probably poach players from the current superhero games by making a clone of CoH, because CoH was busy doing just that when it was shuttered.

I doubt this was specifically because of the rooting during animations. But part of its popularity was that it had a control system that was friendly to casual players. And if you can't make an easy control system, one way or another, you will lose some of the players who are waiting for such a game.

And the fact that we now have four would-be spiritual successors to CoH under development testifies to two things:
1) CoH was quite popular when it was shut down, and still is seen as the gold standard of the genre.
2) CoH players never really agreed on anything except that the game was fun to play, and we still don't agree, as you can see right here.

CoH was in 2012 and before 2012. it's now 5 years after it shut down. Games are changing and the market has moved on. did you not read his post?

I did read the post, but as far as I could see it was based on a misunderstanding: That CoH had been somehow outcompeted by newer games. In reality, we still have the same games that struggled to keep their players from going over to CoH when the new car smell wore off, until they got the unexpected help from NCSoft.

Itlandm wrote:
You know the misunderstanding is far from the only good reason he mentioned.

Crisscross wrote:
This. This times a billion.

If part of the concern is the difficulty of gameplay, I think Crisscross nailed it. Pacing and animations can be improved without making the combat system too difficult for casual players.